Comments on: The Mushroom House

The Mushroom House

homunculus — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 11:24:14 -0800

The Mushroom House in Whistler, Canada, is the result of 22 years of work by artist/creator Zube. "The interior design is based on the anatomy of a tree. All aspects of the décor reflect this motif, from the womblike hues of the Jacuzzi room in the 'roots' to the vivid leaf greens on the walls in the 'canopy'." [Via Boing Boing.]

By: LoopSouth

LoopSouth — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 11:30:55 -0800

Must be nice to have all that money...

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 11:35:00 -0800

Here's a bit about the construction.

By: specialk420

specialk420 — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 11:36:58 -0800

mmm.. good link. i caught this one about a year ago via the always wonderful caterina.net

By: widdershins

widdershins — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 11:48:24 -0800

I would love it as a vacation/get-away house. If they don't find any buyers, I'm sure they'd make a fortune renting it out to wealthy vacationers.

By: plep

plep — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 11:53:40 -0800

[this is good]

By: quadog

quadog — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 12:13:53 -0800

Yeah, the images of the House are truly beautiful - once you past the clichéd and cumbersome flash nav. Bookmark this site as a good example of the medium obscuring the message.

By: HTuttle

HTuttle — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 12:23:31 -0800

quadog, I alway choose the HTML versions when offered just for that reason. Annoying overuse of flash just pisses me off.

By: fletchmuy

fletchmuy — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 12:30:18 -0800

You can have the rest of the house, I just want to live in that sauna.

By: Dick Paris

Dick Paris — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:03:37 -0800

Not my style but I appreciate the craft. Projects like this leave me flat though when encountering things like dishwashers and refrigerators. (Ditto on the flash version.)

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:09:37 -0800

I wonder how annoying that place would be to live in after a while - if you'd start craving bland colors and straight lines.

By: me3dia

me3dia — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:15:29 -0800

The house is beautiful, but damn the copywriting is overwraught (and I agree, the flash is just dumb).

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:25:21 -0800

Did anyone see a price? I may have just missed it in the overwhelming awe and desire I felt. I want it, I want it, I want it! (I'm sure I can't afford it...but damn...I want it!)

By: starvingartist

starvingartist — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:49:49 -0800

dejah - in that link that homonculus gave farther up, there was a comment that the minimum bid to be even considered should be $5 mil. Better off building your own.

By: freebird

freebird — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 14:19:26 -0800

Wait, if it's based on the anatomy of a tree, why is it called the mushroom house? ::goes to site, clicks around. Ah.

By: Samsonov14

Samsonov14 — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 14:42:01 -0800

God, that's tacky.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 15:23:41 -0800

Starving...yeah, I saw that after my post. It's cool...but it's not 5 mill worth of cool. Then again, I'd be hard pressed to find many things that were 5 mill worth of cool. ;)

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 16:01:48 -0800

Doesn't Sid or Marty Kroft have a hippy home like that, based on the semiotics of HR PufnStuf

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 18:32:28 -0800

It's worth noting that the "red spots" on the HTML pages link to QuickTime VR (?) movies that let you do 360 pans around the home. If you activate "hot spots", you can then go from VR room to VR room. Very, very, excessively cool.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 18:36:18 -0800

Having taken a good look around, I've decided this house would be a bugger to clean. On the other hand, anyone with $5M to toss at a house can probably afford a cleaning service.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 19:14:51 -0800

I was waiting for this to show up here, [via boingboing] of course. My prefab comment, shrinkwrapped for your convenience : I used to live next door to that place. There's also the 'hobbit house' in Emerald Estates in Whistler. I had some of my more transcendant chemical experiences there, no coincidentally. A lovely place - the area, if not the house. I can't remember if it was this one or the hobbit house was the one that burned quite badly about 10 or 11 years back.

By: Gamecat

Gamecat — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 19:36:03 -0800

stavrosthewonderchicken: according to the site it's the same place: "As the home took shape, fascinated onlookers dubbed it The Hobbit House, Bedrock, and finally, The Mushroom House."

By: SPrintF

SPrintF — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 20:16:28 -0800

It follows closely the design principles laid down by Dr. Seuss.

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 22:41:29 -0800

That's one funky house indeed. Cool link homunculus!

By: ceiriog

ceiriog — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 00:07:31 -0800

Very beautiful, but for $5 million you could build about a thousand roundhouses.

By: BT

BT — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 04:27:14 -0800

It's interesting -- it's both wonderful and also too much -- can something be beautiful and tacky at the same time? Even assuming one had the money to buy it, it'd feel almost claustrophobically precious to live in every day. But yes, as a vacation place or weekend retreat, I'd find its appealing qualties (that sauna, those views, the whole funkiness of the thing) inviting enough. Like a really talented, eccentric, self-involved person who is great to have dinner with but you couldn't imagine being married to. Oh, yeah, and that flash nav is a textbook example of pointless complexity.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 05:13:27 -0800

Hmm. Well, I'm pretty sure there was another house in this style somewhere else in Whistler. ...'course I coulda hallucinated that.

By: adzuki

adzuki — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 06:48:45 -0800

Does anybody else think this house looks like it came out of Myst universe? Particularly the forests and natives' houses in Riven. Very nice.

By: kliuless

kliuless — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 17:15:40 -0800

Home for Life in Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire, is the result of a college project to design a child's bed by artist Roger Dean. "The living spaces created by Dean are the result of years of research that has given him a rare insight into how the human psyche relates to interior spaces. The curvilinear shapes don't just look good, they feel good!" [Via SE :]

By: homunculus

homunculus — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 17:44:00 -0800

Dean's designs are great. Here's a previous thread on Home for Life.